Review article
https://doi.org/10.24141/1/6/1/10
Interinfluence between Climate Change and Tourism Industry – a Narrative Review
Aleksandar Racz
orcid.org/0000-0002-3118-2623
; Zdravstveno veleučilište Zagreb, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Abstract
Tourism is one of the fastest growing global economic activities and plays a significant role in national and local economies. Global climate change, as well as sustainable development through socially and environmentally responsible tourism business, is a current field of research for only a small number of scientists worldwide. There is a lack of broader interest, although an expert group gathered around the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the mid-1990s of the 20th century confirmed “with almost complete certainty that human activities are the dominant cause of global warming, leading to multiple manifestations of climate change.” In this way, climate change is no longer the subject of academic research only, but taking into account all other environmental problems, climate change has currently become the greatest challenge and threat to the survival of human civilization, with numerous consequences and a very wide impact on almost all aspects of human life. Climate change undoubtedly also affects the economy, social aspects and relationships in society, and only partly, though very importantly, tourism as an economic branch. There is a two-way relationship between tourism and climate change. On the one hand, tourism largely depends on climate elements such as temperature, precipitation and hours of insolation in the day, that is, on the climate as a whole as an important factor. On the other hand, tourism as a whole, especially transport related to tourist arrivals and departures and tourist accommodation per se, contribute significantly to global warming through greenhouse gas emissions and a significant carbon footprint of tourism. The effects of climate change lead, among other things, to increased risk of floods and droughts, melting of glaciers, rising sea levels, loss of biodiversity, various threats to human health, changing relationships in the social sphere, as well as causing significant damage to all economic activities. Given the extremely high contribution of tourism to the overall gross domestic product of national economies at the same time, any impact of climate change on tourism can have very important economic and development implications. This is very important in Croatia, where tourism forms the backbone of the economy. Great efforts are being made globally and nationally to mitigate the effects of climate change and to plan and take measures to prevent further adverse effects that may be irreversible in the future. Mitigating the interplay of tourism and climate change only seems to depend primarily on technological change, but above all it also significantly depends on economic, political, social and structural change.
Keywords
climate; climate change; global warming; tourism; hotels
Hrčak ID:
235104
URI
Publication date:
4.3.2020.
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